Facebook adds geolocation, check-ins to iPhone and Web apps

Facebook has finally announced its long-rumored location feature, called " …

Facebook has finally joined the rest of the social media world by announcing "Places," a feature that lets users "check in" to a geographical location and broadcast that info to friends. Made for use with mobile devices, Places also allows users to see who else has checked in at a particular location and even tag friends who are there with them. As usual, however, certain groups are already criticizing some of Facebook's settings, saying that the defaults are too fast and loose with users' privacy.

The Places feature is allegedly already available to Facebook users—all that's required is the latest version of the iPhone app, or a browser that supports HTML5 and geolocation, and is pointed at http://touch.facebook.com. (We say "allegedly" because we can't seem to find the feature on the aforelinked site, nor is the latest iPhone app showing up for us yet.) From there, tap the "Check in" button, which will show a list of places that the app identifies as being near you based on the location data sent from your phone. If the place you're at doesn't show up on the list, you can add it or search for it manually.

If you have friends with you, you can essentially check in for them by tagging them when you check in. If there are others (who are presumably not your friends) in that same location, there is a "People Here Now" feature that shows other Facebook users that are near you.

If you're a user of another one of the popular location-based services already, worry not: Facebook announced that it's partnering with FourSquare, Gowalla and Booyah, all of which plan to integrate Facebook's check-ins with their own. (For those just catching up, Booyah is a sort of Gowalla clone, which is a FourSquare clone, which is a Brightkite clone. Insert joke about social media sites here.)

Naturally, there are already complaints about how Facebook is exposing too much user info with this new feature. Although Facebook sets the default permissions for check-ins to friends-only, the ACLU of Northern California says that the "People Here Now" feature doesn't allow granular enough controls—it's either on or off, and you can't control who can see you in the list.

Still, if this is the worst complaint about Facebook's settings, the company seems to have learned its lesson from the myriad of otherrecentcomplaints about the company. Since the Places feature has been rumored for so long (the oldest rumors go back to nearly a year ago), Facebook has likely logged more than just a fleeting moment of thought into how to handle the settings. Still, there's always room for improvement, and Facebook will likely end up feeling the pressure to tighten things up as more users experiment with the feature.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

This is also currently USA only. They claim it will be available in other countries.The most geoloation data I publish is when I am out of the house using Twitter, I almost use Foursquare, unless I remember it that is

Wow... updates from more boring people that want to tell me they just took a dump at Denny's. I just find it humorous that people find their lives so interesting that I have to know every single facet of what they are doing.....and now I can get instant updates and locations.....and now I can get instant updates and locations....and now I can get instant updates and locations....and now I can get instant updates and locations....and now I can get instant updates and locations....and now I can get instant updates and locations....and now I can get instant updates and locations.....

The world is filling up with non important bytes of information.Doesn't anybody else see the absurdity of this crap?

This feature ought to hit Facebook's Android app by about Christmas. I've given up on Foursquare, etc, mostly due to laziness. My twitter app auto-adds geolocation, but doing it yourself all the time gets old. I did like Foursquare because sometimes you'd get a nugget of useful information about a place; we'll see if the same can be said for Facebook's new feature.

The world is filling up with non important bytes of information.Doesn't anybody else see the absurdity of this crap?

What you find useless might be important to say, a local retailer. If there's enough people who use this feature, I can imagine the data points generated will be quite useful for say, companies managing any significant retail space, etc, etc.

I never quite understood the location services. I personally don't want a GPS tracking device stuck up my ass for all the world to see.

Also, see pleaserobme.com, etc. for why this might be a bad idea.

Will all people PLEASE note: There is NO such thing as a GPS tracking device - at least not as you think to belive it!

GPS is a service, you need a device that - by it self - track the location by using the PASSIVE GPS signal. And all these app's, need to do so when YOU tell it to do so..! So please people - if you don't want to use it, DON'T!

The world is filling up with non important bytes of information.Doesn't anybody else see the absurdity of this crap?

Get more interesting friends.

Exactly. I have over 50 people (colleagues?) that I actually know and I'm interested what they are doing. I don't have time or oportunities - as well as they - to talk to each other or meet frequently to share opinions, news etc. Thanks to fb I know when someone is for example abroad - I will know, that calling him/her to check if she/he wants to grab beer will be pointless.

I've blocked most of the spammy apps (farmville etc.) that are noise, and I'm currently getting from fb quite a lot of interesting signal.

Next to marketeers and advertising companies which this feature was built for, this might be interesting to your employer, your neighbors, your parents, private detectives, burglars, stalkers and people who have even more sinister intentions.

I never quite understood the location services. I personally don't want a GPS tracking device stuck up my ass for all the world to see.

Also, see pleaserobme.com, etc. for why this might be a bad idea.

People don't want a nanny state yet at the same time people want to tell us what we should and should not do with our info.

He didn't tell you what to do or not do. He raised a possible concern about the service that some people might not immediately catch on to, and he said he wasn't interested. Some people may be more informed than they were before reading the post (awareness that some may use the location information for bad purposes*), and they can choose to use that information or not use it. That's not even close to a "nanny state".

* While you may have already made that realization due to your brilliance, not everyone puts that together.

I never quite understood the location services. I personally don't want a GPS tracking device stuck up my ass for all the world to see.

Also, see pleaserobme.com, etc. for why this might be a bad idea.

Will all people PLEASE note: There is NO such thing as a GPS tracking device - at least not as you think to belive it!

GPS is a service, you need a device that - by it self - track the location by using the PASSIVE GPS signal. And all these app's, need to do so when YOU tell it to do so..! So please people - if you don't want to use it, DON'T!

Wait, you mean there's no such thing as a device that uses GPS to track people? You know, like those devices that parents clip on their kids to track where they are? I wonder how those things work, if they don't use GPS like they promise to.

Facebook announced that it's partnering with FourSquare, Gowalla and Booyah, all of which plan to integrate Facebook's check-ins with their own. (For those just catching up, Booyah is a sort of Gowalla clone, which is a FourSquare clone, which is a Brightkite clone. Insert joke about social media sites here.)

Quite. Brightkite stand head and shoulders above their imitators. They haven't turned their service into a pointless, annoying "game"; and were socially-minded enough to build the http://check.in/ service, which lets you check in simultaneously to them and their competitors. You generally won't see Brightkite mentioned in breathless articles about locative services - they seem to prefer operating a useful service without hype. I guess from this article they're not interested in tying themselves to Facebook, either. Good for them.